Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Calvin Carter, Founder and President, Bottle Rocket (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Were you charging for these apps?

Calvin Carter: Yes. In 2008 the only way we could build a business and [earn] revenue was to charge for the apps. There was no in-app purchase model that exists today. That came out later. The only way to make money with apps was charging for the download of the app.

SM: What price did you charge for an app?

CC: I believe they were in the $0.99 to $2.99 or $3.99 range. We had one that was $4.99. I don’t think we ever had an app above $5.

SM: How did they do?

CC: Some of them did really well, and they funded our ability to grow the business. We put every dollar we made back into the business to start new apps as well as hiring individuals. We never had outside money, so everything had to come from either me or re-investments back into the business. Some of the apps did extremely poorly, literally making a handful of dollars a month. There were some apps that were making $20 for the entire month. Obviously those were not financial successes, but they were an important brick in the foundation of the business.

Failures are unbelievably important. I believe you should build your house with all the bricks you have, including the ones that are considered failures. Those failures, while they did not make money for the business, were part of the portfolio. They were good apps. They were not monetized well at all, but they worked. The design across all of our work was very impressive. We were very persistent in the design, the engineering performance, the utility, etc.

In 2009 when the demand started to build in the marketplace to do what we do today, which is serving large brands and creating end-to-end strategies and execution capabilities across mobile. When that started to crop up I had a great portfolio. I had nine apps – all of them working and they were good. We had built a shadow. We had done what others had not done.

Our first customer was NPR [National Public Radio]. Later on in our relationship, NPR shared with me the reasons that they selected Bottle Rocket over 11 other companies or individuals. It was a combination of things. One of the things was that it was very clear we were in this – this is what we did. We were completely committed to this industry. We didn’t come late into it. We weren’t doing this on the side. Our success was going to be tied to execution in this one thing. That was what they were looking for. The other side was our ability to quickly articulate concepts, ideas, and strategy. We knew how to do that because, again, I had sketched 30 apps. NPR was not the first one I sketched. We were able to communicate our expertise in the area very clearly. Even the sketches for apps that never got built were an integral part of our building a business.

SM: Take us through three apps that you have built and that are exploring cutting-edge ideas.

CC: The app I was just talking about helped transform the way people could transact with NPR.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Calvin Carter, Founder and President, Bottle Rocket
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